Property and insurance firms team to place healthcare workers in suitable accommodation

Over the course of the Covid-19 crisis, healthcare workers have made up one-in-four cases of the virus, with the HSE and the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) advising workers to avoid shared accommodation in order to protect loved ones and housemates.

In the face of issues surrounding accommodation for frontline workers practicing social distancing away from the workplace, property website Daft.ie has unveiled a new initiative to match healthcare workers with hosts temporarily donating their properties for free.

The website is asking anyone with a suitable property, specifically homes vacated by the dwindling short-term lets market in city centres, to visit housingheroes.daft.ie to register their interest in hosting frontline workers for the Housing Heroes programme.

Furthermore, home insurance firm Liberty Insurance has partnered with the popular property-browsing service on the initiative, and is now offering workers and their hosts free contents insurance for the duration of their day, agreed via digital contracts.

Daft.ie communications manager Raychel O'Connell said, "We know a lot of healthcare workers are facing serious hardships during this time and Daft is working around the clock to source properties where they can stay for free.

"We have already had many generous offers from people across the country, but with so many healthcare workers falling ill they need much more. We are asking people if they, or anyone they know has an empty property to consider offering it to one of our healthcare heroes, so they can continue to fight this battle for us all."

The Housing Heroes project has now been live on daft.ie for three weeks, and over 100 properties have been offered to the programme so far, with 80% of properties being filled with doctors and nurses in 13 counties across Ireland.

The properties themselves have received more than 800 enquiries, and have been viewed over 25,000 times, with 8 times more demand from frontline healthcare personnel than available supply at present.

For more information, visit housingheroes.daft.ie, or email [e-mail].